City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello everybody. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I'm glad to be here. So this is um Charlie and I are really excited about the next step of this um exercise of a return to where we were. So um so first of all, this is not a reinvention as we talked about several weeks ago in February, I think it was. Um, we really talked about returning to Ellsworth's historic identity rather than reinventing it. Um, so what you're going to see tonight is how the idea is taking shape. And again, you know, it's not just a logo. It's truly a whole system. So, it's really got to be designed to work all together over many different concepts. So, built in partnership with the Portland Design Company. We went from six concepts down to three. And I'm going to show you those um three concepts tonight.

And we'll walk through we'll walk through them. We'll walk through them individually. Now I wonder why my wonder how I advance it because it's not doing it right from here. Oh, there we go. There. Just need a geometric touch. Okay. So, can you see it? All right. All right. So, here we have um So, again, three options. I'm gonna walk us through. Thank you. Um, so this is direction one. Okay. Um, in our discussions, we bless you. We we really felt that this one just wasn't quite there yet. It leaned a little bit too much into history and it may not give us the flexibility that we needed moving forward, especially across um digital and other future applications. And the font on this one's a little tricky, right? So that's option one. Here's option two. Now, I know that like to the naked eye there, these three may not have huge sweeping differences, but I'll tell you, Charlie and I and a number of our team have poured over these. So, um, this is option two. So, what we're seeing here is we really didn't feel that this one landed quite as strongly in either direction, either contemporary or historic. So, it kind of sits in the middle of it doesn't really have that level of clarity or flexibility that we're going to need. So, and this one as well, you know, the font isn't where we wanted it. It's really not quite as professional as we want. So, that's option two. And here we go at um direction number three. So, this is the one that really clicked for us. So,

there are some tweaks coming soon to this direction, but this is the one. Yep. This is the one that um that we're really kind of leaning into, right? This one strikes the strongest balance between honoring Ellsworth's history. Hi, Sue. And really giving us something that really will work today and will work into the future. So, on this one, you'll see that nod to um the historic sketch of our city hall and the Koopa and the weather bank. Again, keep in mind, folks, there are some some edits that we're going to be making to this that will be coming soon. But this is this is really the option that's cleaner, it's the cleanest, it's more adaptable than the other two, and it's more usable across all of the different um areas like signage from digital to clothing to the the fleet of vehicles. So, that's that. And most importantly, it really we felt strongly that it really feels like Ellsworth. So it reflects what we heard and um that's really important to us and what we value and where we're going. And the other good thing is as a bonus, the kids loved it, right? Charlie floated this by the kids at STEM a couple weeks ago. Love that, right Charlie? Yep.

Um so yes, so we are uh refining this a little bit, but indeed this is the direction that we're moving in.

So here we go. So here's the three of them. So after reviewing all three and working very closely with our team, we are re recommending direction three with a few small tweaks. Um so we have some refining coming to that direction, but that is indeed where we're headed. So why why direction three? So, here's a list of some of the strong reasons why we're going in this direction. I don't need to read them all to you, but really it comes down to balance and flexibility and a good fit for Ellsworth while still staying true to our history. And again, I'll reiterate, it isn't about picking a logo. It's really about choosing a concept and a system. So, it's about how Ellsworth will show up consistently everywhere where we show up. So, direction 3 really does give us the strongest foundation to do that and um and to do that really well. So, our focus tonight is um really to share these recommendations, to chat and get your feedback, to continue working with our partner, the Portland Design Company, to get those final refinements done, and then to truly prepare a thoughtful phase roll out to our community. So, there you have it. I've got a couple first just thank you so much to uh Amy here. One of the reasons that we brought her in is her incredible expertise with branding and like in addition to all this work here. I mean there was like nine original directions we had of different colors and different options and um some a little wilder than others and um we did we did a survey on a lot of this. We brought it to one council meeting. One of the kind of just small edits that they're making here, I think that um is they're we're kind of moving away from the the weather vein as like the little mini logo for everything. We're going to stick to kind of the Koopa. Um it

wasn't, you know, which was one of the giant choices. They're also working on like one that has like the word Maine in it. Um I think we we want to stick to just mostly Ellsworth the friendly city, but also have an option that's a little bit more kind of tourist friendly on Ellsworth, Maine. And um having that piece um they're going to try to get us a little loon um as one of our icons. That was one of our icons. That was a staff recommendation on the um the invasive cattail. Uh might not be the best recommendation. Yeah. I think that was Danielle that asked us to remove that. Yeah. And the uh the beautiful tremolos from our our gorge. They wouldn't let me bring up moose. I did say that there was one downtown, but public didn't really think that was very one right by my office window. Really?

On Branch Lake. There's one that's always in my backyard. I feel like we could adopt the moose a little more. I've never seen a moose in Ellsworth or in Aadia, but that doesn't stop them. You're gonna be in the right spot at the right time. Oh my god, what satellite? So, we'll be going to um kind and also Amy's just awesome because she's so in the weeds on like, hey, does this work with an embroidery firm to get put on a hat? Which is like sometimes you see our logo on things and it's just blob.

It's just a blob of um and also just from a budget perspective too, like this branding work is is really to help guide the the wayfinding signage piece, which we need. You know, this is the new stuff we're going to put on the welcome to Ellsworth and um and the color. So, before we can kind of get to that, we need to have this piece, but also just um so taxpayers know like we're not ripping off every decal off every car and putting a new like um we're going to let this slowly play in. would not have been a new um a big um you know as things wear out and we can put them on there digitally obviously it's free to just update all our digital materials and a lot of these will be so we'll have a big kind of initial boost but um don't there's not a big budget request ask here to replace all the world trucks or anything but um if what breaks down and gets replaced with something else we put the new logo on that some key aspects gets renovated put the new logo on that that and just a little bit more of a peace meal approach to this transition Um, thought about doing some swag, too, but budget conscious. Well, I might pay for my own and see if I can get enough of people subscribing to it to get one. We had a conversation today volunteers and maybe we can.

You did? Yeah. Maybe we can use that as as a way to get um, you know, some new if people want to staff wants to volunteer for the day, they can get a hat or community wants to volunteer. Maybe they have them for purchase or sale and five bucks goes to the parks and department or something like that. Yeah. See, I like the idea. Do you like balloon? Yeah. Yeah. Balloon or you know a deer. How do you incorporate the the the little images into like when do you use those the little icons? Yes. Yes.

And you know it's that's a great question. So, it could be as part of a um story or an article on the website or through um social media. It could be even, you know, when you open a tab on your browser and there's often like a little image. It could be that like the little icon that could start to resonate with Ellsworth like I love the Koopa and how that ties in. Um it might be as well like when you see the second row there I don't know if it's so you see public works and so those are departments so we're picturing those thing on things on clothing so we're not going to do the weather vein we're going to do the koopa on there so th this gives us some flexibility to play around with what what we might be able to flip out just to keep it fresh while still staying consistent almost like it's a deck of cards that all looks alike although there have some differences to them.

Yeah. Like the for instance maybe public works has the Koopa but parks and wreck has the tree or something like that or kind of staying so so for on clothing it will be it'll remain consistent and they'll end up and the trucks and everything. Right. Right. So yes and and it's going to be the Koopa. Um but those icons Tabitha they could be used through social media. They could be used maybe on memos um through other articles, maybe like window clings, things just to add little accents to the brand. Yeah. Yeah. Good question.

Like a frontation would be either the coupler or the whole building at the top would be a choice. You know what I mean? You mean like on letterhead Patrick? Well, like you're giving away giving a certificate. Oh yeah, as an award, right? Something to get on. Yeah, it's a great idea. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Yeah. And I think um it was also just it was it was a great research project to work with Avon and the team, you know, um resurfacing the friendly city which has kind of been stared at us the whole time in some ways. It's on a lot of like the old postcards. You actually go to the library, you see some of the blowup images. They have open blowups of the old postcards. Have you seen this kind of stuff? friendly city. Um and then the the importance of city hall too I think as a you know as a that came up in the research on what people were you know hey what do you what do you recognize

icon right yeah and they mentioned the the bridge and I think some of that feedback is what we pulled upon to come up with these logo or these icons along the bottom and the other thing too is our discover Ellsworth work that um that site is now live and we kept that in mind as well as we went through this exercise. So, and then of course there's the library. They're going to be going live with their new brand later this month and they use the same company. So, we wanted again to look look gel like a we're all one family. Yeah. So, that's my presentation.

I think that this one dropped in on me. Well, there's there's a couple of fits and starts too. We had somebody recognize that like, "Hey, the friendly looks like Friendly's ice cream font." And I was like, "Oh, thank God somebody saw that cuz it looked exactly like the friendly ice cream font." I was like, "That's a friendly font." But and we talked to the kids on some of the, you know, there's a few options before one had a green and white and I had the kids vote on what they like with red versus green and they were like, I think it was 18 to three on the kid votes for stick with the red and green. Oh, really? Yeah. They don't they didn't like the green and white. MDI.

Oh, they're You asked the STEM kids, right? The Ellsworth kids. Yeah. The Ellsworth kids. They were like, "This is MBI." Like, "Oh, man." Oh, yeah. Gosh, that would have been a disaster. Got the friendlies font, green and white like MBI. Oh, man. I'm so sorry. That's okay. No.

Yeah. And I'd say resurface in addition to our current logo kind of city hall. Um the uh the kind of original logos also had a stylized version of city hall as it was. I think it's a Georgian revival building. It's just such a you know they don't make them like this anymore in government. It's such a beautiful building there. I'm really excited about this. It's going to it's it's going to look so fresh and coherent. It's going to be exciting.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice work. I love it. We won't have a we'll have more than a 34 KB um kilobyte font logo to put on blow it up and it doesn't mize. So I think it was great for you know the time that it was I think it was made by like city man's assistant 25 years ago. Um so it would be nice to have a little more large collection. That's true. Uh we don't really have a time frame yet. I think we'll let the library have their day of April 20th and then yeah,

we'll figure out our own little launch plan. Um, and yeah, you'll probably see some changes in the memos. And that's another piece of this. We're getting a font and style guide because it is a bit more like here's how you use the colors, here's how you use the fonts. When you have that in organization, it can help with kind of cultural consistency across places. Well, that right and people just can't go rogue that way either because there's parameters that Yeah.

Right now, you look at our signage like see um you know the Commerce Park sign looks one way um for the city of Ellsworth with one kind of font landscape and symbols and then you know you'll see uh like some parking signs over here that use like a different version of city hall and a brand and then the stuff on our you know on our memos and the general logos and the websites. So um having all these things start to be like this is it wherever you go it's you know in these experiences really nice it's um my experiences in other brand areas that it's like such a small but important piece to have consistent brand ecosystem

and you know it was good too with all the work that Twilight did with the wayfinding committee kind of keeping all that in mind as we were moving through this as well as helpful. Yeah. And the friendly city. I'm super excited about that for a lot of reasons. Just, you know, to me it is what I love about Ellsworth and just it's a friendly, approachable um city that still has a lot of that like small town charm that most cities have lost. How do we kind of keep that? And it's also aspirational. Are we being business friendly with this? Are we being parks friendly? Are they approachable? Is our staff being friendly? Are our citizens being friendly? Um,

yeah, there's a lot we can play off like business friendly or pet friendly or, you know, child friendly, dog friendly. There's going to be a lot of fun once we get established with the brand, too. I think that we can play off of and good new swag. Right. Right. That's it. Thank you, guys. That was fun. All right, Danielle, take it away. Not my turn. I think you got the fire. Sorry, guys. Okay. Do you want to come sit with us?

Sure, I'll come sit. I think let Tyler come up because he's a big huge part of this. So, as you know, Thursday, uh, we're going to be coming coming before you to, uh, authorize the purchase of the fire truck. uh back in October um you authorized the the ban funds for the replacement of engine 7 so that we could replace engine 7 which was a uh reserve fire truck and in doing so once a new fire truck came in engine two which is a frontline engine currently but also cost us the most money in repairs will be put into reserve status so we can get five more years out of that truck uh once it moves once it moves into reserve status. So after you guys gave me the approval, what I did is I met I met with the captains and came up with a apparatus committee and I charged them with the boundaries that I had set one with the money that you you guys had authorized to but really was to set some parameters on we didn't want to spend a million dollars on fire truck. We want to be very very diligent about making sure we got the right truck for Ellsworth, but that we were also budget conscious about it because we knew in order to bring a firet truck into Ellsworth, we were also going to have to outfit it. So when the truck rolled in the door, it was ready to start responding to calls, which means we have to equip it. The stuff that's on engine 7 currently is aged out equipment. It doesn't belong on a new fire truck. So, um, and I'm going to push this over to Tyler because these guys did an incredible amount of work in a very short period of time. It's a process that usually takes a year to do on their specking trucks and they started in November.

Um, yeah, we started meeting in November and then we had our spec done pretty quick, but uh, we were at the mercy of the tenders for their timelines because they're very busy. Um, we just recently got the last proposal in just a week and a half ago, a week ago.

So, it's it's been a very tight timeline, but we didn't cut any corners, that's for sure. We did our homework. Um, spent a lot of time deciding what we needed versus what we wanted. Some of that can be seen. I tried to break it down pretty straightforward for you guys. some of the cost cost-saving measures that we did one in particular as you see in the last page of Cummings L9 engine. So the EPA I'm sure council is aware of this 2027 they're coming out with new emission standards that's making diesel engines a lot more expensive. Um they recently rolled back some of that but manufacturers aren't jumping on that bandwagon. They're still rolling out the 2027 emission standards. Um, this engine is, as far as we know, the last engine available anyway. Pierce just happens to have one sitting on the shelf and currently it's allocated for elsewhere until April uh 10th. Um, so if we were to not pursue this contract before the 10th of April, you would have to add at minimum 65,000 to the cost. Um, and then July one, there was also a price increase. I'm just turning it on now. of all the vendors we reached out to. There's three major four major reps in the state um that we can source apparatus from. Were you purposely just looking for instate vendors?

Yeah, mostly for service work. Um it gets pretty could be a logistical nightmare to get a you know any apparatus. It's a Massachusetts or further away and especially a fire truck. Currently our service goes to Brunswick for most everything. Brunswick or Auburn. So for us that may sound bad in your car 2-hour drive in a fire truck. We're max out 65 and we lose a truck for upwards of a week because we're not just because we have an appointment doesn't mean we're going to get in, right? So we could lose a truck for a week just by going to 24 to Yeah. And Pierce is in Mayor, correct? Yeah.

So let's see. I'll just go down through the list of vendors. If you have any questions, I did you guys do an RFP or you just reach out to the vendors and tell them what you're looking for?

So we reached out to the vendors um and told them what we were looking for. We gave them all the same specifications. We didn't write a full spec, you know, down to like tire size and stuff like that. They met with us. We gave them everything that we needed out of the truck, size constraints. Um the fire capability that we wanted and then they came back to us. We made some tweets and we made sure it was truck for truck bananas and apples. It was comparable. K&T is it Falls? They're one of the older reps. They haven't been able to keep up with some of the bigger departments that have been bought out by larger companies. Um they were unable to participate in any cooperative purchasing. They couldn't meet a reasonable delivery timeline and on one of their trucks that couldn't meet the specifications. And it's also a three-hour ride service. Greenwood. We have one apparatus that we purchased from Greenwood currently. That's our engine two. The rep was very upfront when we met with him. He said, "I can't even give you a stock truck with no options for under a million dollars."

So, we wrote that off right out the gate. They also sell Spartan trucks. Um, custom truck wouldn't fit in the budget, so he gave us a stock truck price, which is basically here's a truck, make it work for you. It didn't meet our specifications. Northeast Emergency apparazzes Ferrara. Downfall with them is they did not meet our spec due to the box configuration. We need full height compartments, store rescue tools. Uh and they couldn't do that. So finally we get down to allegiance. They met all our specifications. Service time is 45 minute ride. They're a single source vendor and manufacturer. Meaning they only sell one truck. They don't push a bunch of different apparatus. You work directly with the manufacturer. Cost is obviously the cheapest with that prepayment option. It's well under budget and allows us to have the funding we need to equip the truck, especially with the sale of end. And it has the quickest delivery time 13 months from the contract side.

The sale of the reserve piece. Okay. The one that's in reserve. Once the new truck comes in, that truck will be we can now slate it as out of service because engine two that's downstairs will move over into that place as reserve truck. So when the new fire truck will be a front line will be front line. So what what is the next?

Sorry. Are we are we clear? Yeah. What's the expected revenue from that? Depends on the uh the path that we take. If you guys want us to auction it off, then it's really what you guys settle on. I think the hope we go through third party broker. Um um there's a couple of third party brokers that we can use. Um, one of them just at sitting has a truck at roughly $100,000. Doesn't mean we're going to get $100,000 for that. Um, recommending this price

recommend. Yeah. So, but it would be far above if we were to auction that truck off and get 20 $30,000. I guess that's where I'm relation. What What's a very concern? I think we're figuring we would probably get between 157 $75,000 for that truck if we bro it. If we can broker it, if if it goes to auction, I would say that's a variable. 20,000 I guess because it's going to go to a small volunteer department that doesn't have a lot of money. There's not a big market for those trucks in this area. Yeah, that's why I'm asking.

You don't you don't I I don't know, but I guess it seems that fire trucks don't bring a whole lot of money. Maybe I'm wrong. They're uh depends on the age. So this is so this is one of those things we had we had talked about in the past. Somewhere in that age range 9 10 11 years old it's still holding its value and the turnaround on that you're still getting a tough dollar for it because it really hasn't exceeded its lifespan. The maintenance costs costs are outweighing it value once we start pushing that limit. Now engine 7 is coming up on 20 years old. Um, so it one it's beyond its its for our type department. It's beyond its its uh true service life. Um, mileage on it for a volunteer fire department. That truck's only got 50.

Yeah, I think it was 56,000 miles on it. Um, I don't remember what it had for engine hours on it. Um, I like to explain it like u it's prorated basically for every year that it's used. So if it's 500,000 new, 20 years down the road, you know, or 10 years down the road, halfway through it service life, it's worth 250,000. There's no real market driven cost. It's more proration. It's the best way I can describe it. Yeah. Because typically the mileage may be lower than what the hours are cuz uh you go to a site time

and you you got it idling and then you hook it up. I think that truck said a little over 3,000 engine hours on it is what it if I remember right. Yeah, because you're using it to pump water, pull water, push it. This um Allegiance Fire with the Pierce model. So that's the only one they sell or they only sell Pierce apparatus. Apparatus. Okay. Are there other departments in the area that use this apparatus? Yep. Yep. Bangor does uh Camden trying to think where the new he said the newest one Wisconsin.

Can we reach out to any of the departments about their satisfaction with it? Uh very high satisfaction ratings across the board. Even from their older trucks to current the most recent delivery they're very happy with. We did that with all the manufacturers. Ferrari got some negative feedback. the island of Mount Ber that's been broke down more that's had service broke down on the way to take delivery and then they had to deal with some other issues it broke down the ceiling the building fire broke down could happen to any of them bugs out

actually it's out of service again from the fire I think the city had pierc couple of pierces long I think the old uh The old ladder was American with France. It was Yeah, they had a couple American with France. I don't remember if the old engine 7 was a pier or not. American America question. So, this is just for the truck itself. It takes 13 months to to build that out and without any of the the equipment

the equipment on it. So you'll be coming is that coming to this 13 months out. I guess that would put us into next week. Yeah. So still in fiscal 27. So you'll be asking for to outfit it. Actually we in this in this uh when we come to you on Thursday, we're asking to do it all because we want to get all that stuff at the current pricing and not try and do this next year and wind up with all the every six month increases. We want to be able to have this stuff ready for when it gets here.

And there's some stuff that we can authorize the uh the builder to source and have them install it. That way when the truck comes here, we just have to put stuff on the truck. So, but that's part of that memo for for uh Thursday night is to kind of do this all as one package and let's take care of it all at once. Does that stay in the million? I feel like that's going to be No, we're we plan to stay under a million dollars for the whole kaboodleoodle. Oh wow. Not counting. If it was over a million dollars, it would be engine 7 to make up whatever. So that was my question is what happens with the the net from engine 7? Does that go into the same fund?

So what I asked for is that whatever the balance was is that that go into a capital fire department capital reserve for future purchases. Yep, that makes sense. And if I did the math right, the um the discount for prepay is around 3.7% which is better than we would do um putting it in an account or holding off on whatever we're paying them. So that seems like a good savings. Um, one benefit with Pierce, they send their trucks with ground ladders, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's about $4,000 to purchase ladders, and then shipping is almost as much as that.

We save some money there, too. It's not going to show.

Patrick, you asked about the RFP. They really kind of prioritize source well and like the the competitive cooperative purchases. Um, so it's mentioned, you know, that allows the city to kind of piggy back onto larger government cooperative purchases and essentially like this is the type of truck we need and able to review these prices and know that, you know, essentially that works already been done for us for much larger government cooperative purchase to see what was available. It's also one of the reasons that chief and they did the quick work of Captain Kennedy um saw this option was available and we could go through source well for it. Um but it's something that we should consider. So I added it to the special meeting uh for next week. Um this is be a good idea to move forward with. I know we've been talking about this actually for a while. I think the previous city council passed the band funding. Before that, we had a lot of capital discussions on what was the most need in the city in kind of year one, the school track, and this came to the top of the list. Sarah's um coming back with the the full 10-year plan. I know we did a preview of that at the last workshop. Um but uh you know, just trying to eat away each year a little bit around those prioritized capital. Are the costs saving measures things that you guys just really didn't need or are there?

Yeah, they're um not needed and some of them are like a dual purpose cost savings or long-term cost savings. The engine um we just got lucky with that. The X-15 isn't out yet. Um anytime there is a new engine, there's going to be kinks to work out. So, we got lucky there. The front suspension would be amazing to have. Everybody that has it in their trucks says you shouldn't buy this truck without it, but

we would rather use $40,000 to buy, you know, functional equipment that have a comfortable ride. um compressed air foam system. They're great for fighting fires, especially when you're short-handed like we are a lot of the time, but they have a lot of issues and long-term maintenance costs that we've experienced on engine 7 and engine 2. The cost and the maintenance kind of outweighs its effectiveness. The electronic intake valves, they're great for a pump operator to be able to open the valves on the opposite side of the truck quickly, but again, they're very expensive. They break down um and they fail. So they still have to open them manually. Painted roller doors, that's just a cosmetic thing, makes a truck look better. Um the multipplex driver controls, those are nice, but again, the price doesn't really justify the need. And the aluminum hose bed cover that makes it nice for snow um being able to walk on top of the truck. uh for $7,000. We've done just fine with canvas covers ever since the galvanized frame rails that was a $6,000 expense, but Pierce dips theirs in a V coating. Um supposedly it holds up better than galvanized because it's an actual coating, so it protects against abrasive wear, not just uh corrosion. And then obviously the prepayment options there.

So these are something maybe they're nice but when you balance it out it's not worth the cost. And this version that you've come up with you can still fight fires as well as you want to. One of the approaches that we we had them do from from the beginning was wants needs and wishes and they started trimming from there. So that's really what they did. So yeah, really we're down to a purpose-built fire truck that's made for the city of Elsewhere with what they need to do their job effectively with the least amount of interruption. Yeah, it comes in. That was the goal. We built that.

We built our dream truck the first meeting and then that quickly went up. Kind of like designing a house. Yeah, exactly. The ingground pool disappeared pretty quickly. No, this is a very functional truck that should last us well for the service life. It's got some improvements over engine two now. Changed some hose lays and added a couple things just how we operate now. So, it'll be an upgrade for sure. I said I got to give that apparatus committee. They did all the work. They put in a lot of time and effort made it happen.

Say I love the idea of getting the last of a good known engine as opposed to the first. Yeah, new standards and Okay, we have had some issues with the L9, but I think probably have the engine. A lot of that is just keeping up on the maintenance company makes a good engines. And will um the company in Bangor help help you with maintenance, all the warranty work and everything. The allegiance we do a lot of mobile service work which is nice truck to the station.

The other good thing is a Cumins engine work if you know once it's out of warranty you don't have to go right to it. Where is this Allegiant Fire and Rescue located in

Bang? Yeah, they're actually cold. I forget the name of who they were before they were legion. You're probably familiar with who are they the truck dealers? They're out by They're out by opening day

so that's the same as the truck dealer there that bought out Dagel and out I believe so it is okay y that's them all the all they've into my mind yeah they've taken all the mechanics when they come underneath the allegiance umbrella and they've sent them all the training so they're all certified fire mechanics so they're they're able to work on all the pumps and they're certified to do Yeah. And all the electrical systems before that their closest office was in Adventures.

Yeah. So it's not three hour. I appreciate the background seeing the um thinking that went behind the decision. It makes sense. Any other questions from council? Chief Captain, we can put the new logo on this in 14.

Anything else you want to see when we come on Thursday?

We made you. The question was directly. Is there anything else that you would like to see before we come to you on Thursday? when we call on I I don't see that there is I was a little confused about this fire and rescue. So it's allegiance who builds the the truck itself pierce manufacturer. So the the carrier is Pierce or it's another carrier. So the manufacturer is Pierce at least. That's the body, right? Yeah, that would be the body. Yeah. Everything body, chassis. They build their own frame rails and everything.

A lot of their stuff is proprietary to Pers for building the truck. And it'll be it'll be built down in Florida. So it's not like an international truck. No, no. Pierce body. No, no, this is a frame up.

Yeah. I think we'll just um try to keep in mind maybe Captain Kennedy, you're so great today. I'm just um you know, the council has heard about this before. Yeah, let videos know that they can use especially some of the cost pieces here source those pieces just that way it's like wow they're in they haven't even discussed this at all great time our work ready

okay um up next is Danielle with a comprehensive ordinance project update I'm trying to save computer battery power so I can sign back out of the TV and stuff. So, I'm just here to give you an update on how we're doing with the ordinance project. And so, Here we go. Okay. So, I wanted to give you an update on the project itself and tell you what we've been up to since the um original workshop that we came to you on Groundhog's Day, ironically enough. Um, and so I'm going to go through just a reminder of the background, the reason why this project is happening. Um, we all know that Elzor is is seeing huge growth. Um it's the fastest growing city in Maine and we went through some uh pretty substantial strategic planning efforts a couple years ago and as part of that we adopted a new comprehensive plan, a housing needs assessment. There's a business needs assessment plan that came out of that as well. And the comp plan really pointed to a slew of ordinance revisions that needed to

happen in order to implement the recommendations and the priority projects that were identified in the comp plan. So that's why this project came to fruition. Um here are some of the goals of the project. Overall, we wanted to make it a lot more understandable and usable by removing outdated language, any conflicting language as well. We wanted to streamline a lot of our processes, not just the development, but that was a focus for sure. Clarifying um what to the to staff, applicants, and the public how to use and who is responsible for what parts of our code. Um, obviously a big one is complying with state statutes and land use law. There have been a lot of changes recently. We want to make sure that we're in compliance with that and of course aligning with these plans and these strategic planning efforts. It's a two-phaseed approach that we're using and right now we are in the midst of phase one and phase one is really focusing on the technical updates to our ordinance and bringing things into legal compliance with this uh with our land use ordinances um and align with some recent um state laws that may be changing. We're not quite sure. Nancy is very familiar with what's going on with those.

Yeah. So, we're keeping an eye on that. But one of the amendments um is related to the state statute LD1829. You'll hear us talk about it a lot. And those amendments related to that law have to be in place by July 1st of this summer. There's a fix it bill that's coming through and has been workshopped at nauseium um at the state level. And one of the things that really would um uh apply to us strong well the thing that I'm hoping for actually is um an extension on that compliance date to the following summer. So to July of 2027 that would give us some more breathing room of course but right now until that passes we have to move forward with the understanding that we we have that

to get into the final billing which 2173 but it has to pass. It has to pass and we're anticipating it'll go um up in we'll know by midappril. We'll know by the middle of this month. Legis probably most bills are going to get run this week. Okay. Yeah. So, we will know soon. Are you feeling like really rushed to get this done by this date?

No. No. It's more that um because the pro the process of reviewing everything started back in September when this bill thing was kind of like a twinkle in the eye. So we had been moving forward with this plan anyway. Um I think it's more that if we miss the boat of approving it in June, then there will be a time frame until we adopt these amendments um that will be out of compliance with the state law. Yeah, because 2173 backs off on some of the 1829 rules. Yeah. To make it better. Well, 2173 is what they're considering right now to amend.

Yep. Yes. It's it is out of the committee. It's waiting. It's got to go to the House and Senate and such. But it's more like you're if the council isn't okay with this, then we would be out of compliance with the state. but not necessarily that you feel like the the ordinances are or your work that you've been doing has been rushed and done. Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe that the the housekeeping ordinance um the housekeeping revisions I don't think they were rushed. Um because they are and I'll go through this a little bit more, but they're not very complex things. There are things like making sure the numbering is right, making sure that we're not being redundant in chapters where we explain a process in one chapter and another one and then yet in a third way and they're all kind of different. These were not policy decisionbased amendments at all. These so in some places it's literally changing a word from capital to lowercase. Um, and then there were a lot of re uh references to the state law to make it a lot easier to understand where things were coming from and why it's in there.

Yeah. Yeah. What's the spirit of the change at the state level?

Oh, so for LD1829, it's a land use ordinance. So, it's um really focused on affordable housing and uh um increasing the density of affordable housing in certain zones. And one of the things it's focused on is whether um the construction is happening within one of our growth areas or outside of the growth area. And there are kind of different um density requirements for either and then whether um the property is served by city water and sewer or not. Um it also um has um influence on the minimum lot size and so um the it kind of shrinks the minimum lot size to a smaller size but within the growth area and if served by city services. Um outside of that we um defaulted to what already existed in our ordinance. And if I can just be clear it's not requiring property owners to build more densely. It says the municipality must allow it if the property owner chooses

yes that density. So it's it's um requiring the municipality to allow the property o owner to do more where we want the growth in the designated curve areas. So it's I could be wrong on this one.

That's a good distinction. I think the consultant was mentioning like like Ellsworth's already pretty good like we're not too like you know some cities and towns yeah they're being way too restrictive on density of building and this is going to come up like if it's goes forward you have development like hey the state law says this your law says this like I'm going to start building this and now it's kind like ah we got to rush to this we're not going to be necessarily we don't hit we're not going to hit those trip wires as much as like cities and towns because we already have pretty we have the growth to prove it too. So what are I think were you asking also like why is the state change like

I just want to know the spirit of of what the state was up to? Yeah. What are the changes other than the the applicability date that they're considering with 182? H no 2173 is the one that's here now.

Yeah. it. Um, boy, I lived it for about three weeks and now I've been able to set it aside for two weeks. I can share with you guys a summary of what it does. Sure to try to look it up now. But what there were some concerns about again where there's water and sewer outside of the growth area. So it's areas that examples were used like there might be water and sewer that goes out to an industrial park and the intention wasn't that we do a lot of of stuff along the water and sewer. The capacities for that industrial park. 1829 says you have to allow that same density of 5,000 square feet. This change says okay in those areas where um you're not in the growth area. not where the town has said we want growth, but there's the water sewer line. You have to allow 10,000 square foot. So, it's that little bit of accommodation for what really went against the whole spirit of a comprehensive plan and deciding growth areas are where we want to really encourage growth and like kind of accommodated the concerns that many of us raised. That's one example

similar to that. uh few years ago one or whatever 2003 was the first 1829 was a fix it to 2003 and went further. Yeah. 2173 is the third in the series that um there are some corrections of language. Yeah.

Um and even some of it was using descriptions for water and sewer. The changes in 2173 used the language from the main water district association and the fire marshall's office came in because there was some um disallowing uh fire marshall or the local fire chief to um hold standards on some of the requirements and it's like this that's not okay. So they they listened to the water association which was um sewer as well and the fire marshall's office on these changes went too far in 1829 and brought them back in.

I spent many many days in the hearing room pushing for those kinds of changes. So yeah, so it'll be more consistent and the same outcome of of reducing the regulation where we want to see growth and again requiring the municipalities to allow if a property owner wants more density but doing it a way that makes more sense and and um the the different all of the different places that were impacted by it were support um coming in with these recommended changes and brought forward

and is a lot this I know there's a a few years ago there was the big like housing task force that met and proposed a lot of stuff. Is that's a lot of is still coming out of that there. The result of that was early 2003. Yeah. So now there's um I think larger scale there was the um a firm that came in and set this is where the more recently is the standards where every county has what is it 80,000 dwelling units we need more of and how many should come from each county all of that came after the task force and then had um consultants come in and say here's here's how you implement the stuff that the commission identified.

Okay. Okay. So, it is kind of a continuation. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's I guess it's another way to look at it. The state has been continuing on this line. How do we remove barriers to with that are within state municipal control? And do we anticipate that's my last question on this line? Do we anticipate like next year will be LD whatever whatever that will be series. It's a it's a new every two years it's a brand new and so there there will be bills to go farther. there will be bills to reel it back. That's the nature of Yeah. democracy is people get to propose things. Yeah. I just didn't know if like because we're

it is she's right because we're planning on implementing and trying to come into compliance. I just didn't know if there's something on the horizon that we should be like, "Oh, it might all change next year." What's important for you to know is that I will be retired next year and we'll be living down. stability housing such you Republican, Democrat, whoever gets elected will decide. This is probably a big issue. And

there there have been some really cool things even like manufactured housing because again like Danielle was talking about in our ordinances, there was a misalignment of it had to be inspected in two different places where stick build on site only had one. And so there have been changes. That's just one example of making it easier, therefore lower cost for manufactured housing, which is still being made in Maine. It used to be huge and now it's coming back um and doing well. So, okay, there's some there's been some good changes.

Thanks. Sorry to take us down that and I am grateful that you are here because it is so complex and I take notes wherever I can to absorb and understand what's going on. And I've been attending um the Mocha has been doing um technical assistance workshops. I think it's like the first Wednesday of every month. So I've attended those to educate myself and understand more what these are. But I

uh MOGA is the main office of community affairs. It's the new um state department actually. Um and so it it has housing in it. So, the housing opportunity program, um, HOP, which we actually were successful in getting a $15,000 grant from them to help like fix these things, um, in our ordinances. So, we were successful there. I can't remember who else is under there, but it is brand new formed as of last year and they're still pulling other offices. Well, and and if I can say, it's what's cool about it, it is a new agency, but most of it is existing staff.

Yeah. any agency or department that does direct support to communities is now under one um office and they're located together. So you've got people who are who used to be in the department of marine resources who had direct community assistance for communities doing that. That program now sits next to the housing opportunity program um and the municipal planning assistance program. They're all sharing space with that whole cross-pollination idea of consistency and there's one place where communities can go and they're currently working on an online resource where you can say this is where my town is. This is the the help I need. Who are the organizations that can help with that and it'll pop up. So there's it's some really cool efficiencies in state government with putting people where they it makes sense for the communities to have that first stop and for them to be able to talk

efficiency in state government. Yes, it is 40 years. 40 years in state government is like okay and it's something to celebrate because it is I'm awake. I'm not dreaming. Yeah.

My gift to you this evening. So, so anyway, so that is phase one that we're focused on. And then phase two um is going to be looking at more complex issues, things that really do require more of a discussion around what policy decision we want to make. This will have a more robust public engagement process, and I'll give a sneak peek of what that looks like and and what what we're planning on for phase two in a little bit. But I wanted to give you an update on where we are with phase one. Here's the timeline that we're looking at. Um, we're here the April 6th council workshop. We have, it's not really a workshop for the public. It's more of an informational session, kind of like how Twilight did TIFF 101. It's more giving information about this project as a whole and then teeing up that we will be looking for your feedback for phase 2. Um we are on track to bring the revisions from the February 2nd draft to the planning board um for them to adopt at their or recommend um that council adopt at their May 6th meeting and then we'll be bringing this entire project back to you for the June 15th meeting to adopt those revisions.

That's phase one.

That's phase one. Mhm. Yep. So that's where we are with that. Um I also plan on coming to every workshop between now and June. Um so that I can give you updates and answer any questions and get feedback from you. That's not the only way. I'll have a slide showing how you can engage with the project more. Um just a little bit more that again this is the focus areas. The housekeeping actions that rem removed these outstated and conflicting languages, streamlined things, etc. and then ensuring we're in compliance with these um land use and zoning ordinances. Um okay, so this is what we've done so far. We started off in September with the consultant and we had that first draft in early February. They are working on getting feed the feedback that we've given them um into their um next draft which we should be seeing I think next week actually. So they're they're moving very quickly on those things, which I think is a sign that we were giving them some good feedback and we're also being very strict about the scope creep and making sure that we're staying within phase one boundaries um and not kind of adding things at the last minute. Um, for the past couple of months since we last since I last saw you for this project, um, we have met with every department that has a chapter with amendments to make sure that they're aware what the amendments are and have been able to give their feedback to us. We've been doing the same thing with our boards and commissions. Um, I just we uh we have one more. I'll be going to board of appeals to give them an update on the project um at their next meeting. Um the March meeting was postponed and so it's at the end of this month. So um we'll be chatting with them and getting their feedback. Um I met with Harbor Commission. That was the last commission I met with last Wednesday. Um and Mareno was at that meeting as well. It was a

good discussion. I actually stayed for the whole meeting. Um beyond my part. Um they're an interesting bunch. Um very I loved hearing about it. Um, this has also been a really great, on a side note, has been a really great introduction to all the things that we do here in Ellsworth with all of the commissions. It's been a really great opportunity for me to meet people and and hear how they do things. So, I've been grateful for that project, this project for that. Um, so the public engagement and adoption times I've mentioned. Um, so in terms of communicating with the outside world, um, we do have a web page that is dedicated to the project. Um, you can find it on the city's website in the I think it's in the government tab. Um, so that's all there. And so this presentation, the recording from the workshop, the recording from the workshop with the planning board um in February, all of the information and all the resources we've put on this web page so it's easy access and we can be consistent about our messaging around it. We also created a dedicated email address to receive feedback, answer questions, all that stuff. And it's very simple. It's ordinance at that's not right. I'll fix the slide. It's ordinance atsworthmain.gov. So, I'll fix that. This is also the email address we'll be using to collect feedback in phase two. Um, we're doing an informational session, workshop, whatever you want to call it, um, next week, actually, April 14th. Um, and then, uh, you know, this, we presented it um, at council workshops um, and have been providing up, this is the first part of providing updates and we'll be continuing to do that. And again, May 6th is the drop deadad date for planning board to keep us on schedule and then the June 15th council meeting. This is a very highlevel view of what some of these amendments have been. In general, you can see on the left side,

every chapter in our ordinance got this treatment of um reading through for clarity and consistency and alignment with state laws. Um all of that kind of thing. Each amendment chapter has a note um that has the dates the section was amended or repealed. Um they've also reumbered things for consistency. Um and in general there are four types of amendments that we'll see in this first phase. There are chapters they recommend repealing entirely and I'll go into that. There are ones that just have very minor things like re removing redundancies um and standardizing the flow of the chapter so that everything is in the same order. And then we have a handful that have some more substantive changes. Um, a lot of times we they get the minor amendment treatment um but also had some additional law related things that needed to be updated. Um, so you'll see that in the Harbor chapter for example. And then some other ones that have more major changes obviously are chapter 56, our land use ordinance one and chapter 14 as well because the processes for licenses and permits are actually housed in our new administrative chapter. so that it's all consistent the way we do applications. Um, this is the only chapter tonight that I'll go into detail about and this is the administration chapter. It is a new chapter as we are now. Chapter one is just the city seal. So, this will this will replace that chapter with his administration and then that includes the city seal in it. So, we don't lose that of course, but it really sets the stage for the entire revision project. um uh some highlights of the articles that are in there. Article two really explains how the code is cited, consistency with the acronyms, how it should be interpreted, who interprets it, who enforces things. It really kind

of delegates the authority, so to speak. Um there's also a unified fee schedule. Um, so all of the fee schedules that were dotted throughout our ordinance are now in one place. Um, and then chapter 14 will have an appendix of just the license fees for easy use for the clerk's office. Um, we listen to you, Sue. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, and there's also a legal article that really consolidates all of the legal provisions from the entire all of the nearly 70 chapters of our code into one place. um so that it's easy to understand. Does that include enforcement?

Yes, it does. Enforcement, waivers, appeals, um all of that is all in one place. You have issues in the town. Oh, that's all. Yeah. I mean, all kinds of towns, different ordinances. You know, the nice thing about us is it's it's a unified ordinance and the but the only you don't get the benefit unless you actually unify it like you guys are doing here. A lot of towns have unified ordinances where they've just kind of pulled other ordinances and put it into one log. That's kind of like this is a unified ordinance and they're like no because different sections say one thing and then the other. So what you I think seems like at one point El just threw everything together. Yeah.

And now we're like, okay, now we actually have to go through this all. But yeah, for if anyone for the city and again like it's all just right there. you don't have to go searching in each separate section. Um, that's huge. It's just make it way more efficient. Finding all your terms up front organiz I noticed that a lot when some of the red line versions it was just like some of this is like contradictory and like nobody even the subject matter experts in journalism. Anybody know what this means? something that's been there for a long long time. Doesn't need to be there anymore. Yeah. So, that is such a

But then you go to another section in in the ordinances and it says it's been repealed. Yes. You wasted two hours thumbming.

Yes. So, uh that was a good tea up. Thank you so much. um because the chapters that are recommended for repealing um primarily are ones that now are addressed in chapter 1. So instead of having a singular chapter that defines the office of code enforcement that's all described in chapter 1 where everyone else is described. Um chapter 20 um to your point Pat um is a miscellaneous chapter that no one seems to understand what it's supposed to do um including the lawyers that looked at this. And so, and apparently there was some penalty things in there that conflicted with state law and other chapters. So, they're recommending that we repeal that one. It's a very I think it's a onepage chapter. Um, and then, you know, so on so forth. So, chapter 26 is addressed in chapter 1, so it doesn't need to be repeated elsewhere. The subdivision ordinance was was a standalone chapter. Um, it now lives in article 7, which was our subdivisions chapter. So subdivisions were talked about in two separate places in our ordinance. Now they're in one place.

I remember that when I was on the planning board. Yeah. A mess.

Yep. Um board of appeals. So this one we did not change any process or any flow related to the board of appeals. The only change in phase one that has happened is that um there was an article in chapter 56 that was specific to the board of appeals and then there was a chapter for the board of appeals. So we took it out of chapter 56 and put that language in the board of appeals chapter so it's all in one place. That's the only change was just moving things around. Um same thing chapter 65 is a weird one since I just had my meeting with um Harbor Commission. They pointed out um some interesting things that don't make this as clean to repeal. So, we're likely going to keep it in there. I'm talking with the consultant to find out what our next steps are with that one. Um they had moved some of the language from the overnight moing and anchorage control into chapter 3. But chapter 65 is specific to our great ponds and the harbor commission does not really have jurisdiction over our great ponds. It's really specific to the harbor and to the Union River. and so uh it doesn't make sense to shove them all together in one chapter. So that'll likely be a discussion for phase two as to if we want to do any changes there. Um and then the unified building ordinance um that is addressed in chapter 1. So these are some examples. I don't want to take like the hu the whole rest of our evening going through these things. I will absolutely share this presentation with you all as well as posting it on the website and I have a slide at the very end of this that addresses every chapter individually what those changes were. Um these are the ones with the minor amendments. Um and as you can see um chapters 57 through 66 which are everything after chapter 56 also were reviewed for with the same lens. Um, and then these are the ones with

substantive amendments. They got the minor amendment treatment, but there was some additional clarification and reorganization that really needed to happen um to for ease of readability. And then also just some standards um to make things consistent with state law, etc. Feel like a broken record. We need to be in compliance. Um, and so the ones that have kind of that orangey yellow block around them, those are the ones that really had some more significant amendments to them as we have discussed um, tonight. Next steps, moving on to phase two. Some of our early identified goals for phase two are looking at individual chapter amendments or gaps and seeing about fixing them. I know for example, chapter 4 is fire protection and Scott had been working on something. So, we want to make sure that all of his amendments were kind of fit into the process. Um, chapter 43, which deals with trees. Um, there are also some amendments that likely need to happen in that one, and I've gotten a document from the Arbor Commission about that already. Um, there are also some more complex policy issues that we need more time and we want to make sure that we do it right and I don't want to just shove amendments through. So, I really want to make sure we take our time with those additional ones. And then we have a lot of outdated chapters. So, I just pulled out one. I don't want to offend anyone if they really love chapter 29, but this one has not been touched since 1976 that I can find. And if you click on it on our city's website, it is literally a scan of a typewritten document or they used like Times New Roman for it, but I'm pretty sure it's a scan. And so, we're not quite sure. you know, it hasn't been touched since before I was born. Um, do we does it still work for Ellsworth now and moving forward? So, I want to have those conversations and instead of just saying, "Ah, this is old. We don't want to deal with this anymore." So, I want to be really smart about this. I also note that phase two is going to be

primarily staffled. It'll take a little bit longer than phase one, um, but it will be primarily staffled. And then um some of the amendments related to land use ordinance, we will have to pull in a consultant to help us with that one. Um so coming down the the main stretch here. So in the next 3 months, these are the things that we are going to be doing with phase 2. Some of them I've already started and they're almost finished. Um that's summarizing the feedback from all of the people that we've talked to for phase one. um uh looking at the comp plan and looking at every single action item that have been identified as ordinance reform and seeing if they've been addressed already in phase one and what more needs to be done. Um and then the next after that is um any sort of additional feedback or um other action items um and outdated chapters like I said. Um, and then the next six months, most of the cities um that I have looked at for ordinance examples in Maine use e-code, which is a digitized version of their ordinances that connect to one another rather than them being individual PDFs on a website. And so I haven't started costing out what that is because they're pretty proprietary about that. You have to engage with their salesperson. Um, but the professional um, access for it um, is $145 a month. So that ends up being $1,500 to be able to maintain easily our ordinances and it has a library that you can pull example ordinances. So say we want to investigate ebikes and see what we want to do about that. We can get examples from other customers of e-code. So I want to explore the migration, find out how much it costs, what you know if if it is a benefit for our city or not. Um I would just say my experience that you

know more and more towns and cities are using e-code and once you get familiar with how it operates, it's much easier to to for someone to engage with electronically. Yeah. And and there's like a search function and Yeah. So I can obviously cost is important but to avoid Pat's story spending two hours thinking you've now understood your thing but there's a link that lets you now know you don't have to drive it to this exact time time is one absolutely so and I think that's from the city side but also from a developer or the public and as more and more cities and towns are using it more

yeah like just for a property owner to understand what they can do on their land to your point seen a scanned document. We saw that the cemetery commission some of their stuff on this. Hey, here's a policy of scan. Oh, there we go. Okay, I brought it on to chair. This is the cemetery uh commission ordinance. It is typewritten. You can see there was a misspelling, so they just took a pen and fixed the thing. Um I've already shared with Danielle the cemetery commission in grammar school. The cemetery commission, it's not a red pen. Cemetery commission is eager to have this updated and in compliance with state law. Danielle mentioned it's not part of phase one, right?

So, we may be looking for other ways u maybe MMA. Um there's a lot of we're we're getting very good at researching um what other towns are doing. But yeah, when it starts out being typewritten, you know, you're in trouble. Why did you leave that out if it wasn't up to date with state law for the cemetery? I don't think it was identified as one of the ones that needed the most work. But it's definitely on our list for phase two. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There's also like our water protection ordinance that needs a lot of work and that wasn't like it got the treatment of everything else. So at least we know like it gave us clarity on what is actually saying but that one needs additional work as well. Yeah. Um, I am gonna come see you guys every three months, so get used to the space. Um, I do want to make sure that I'm giving you all the updates and also, um, giving you a status of the amendments that we have in progress and then what we're recommending for the next amendment cycle. Um, so that like we're looking to you to prioritize what we're going to look at um, in the next kind of cycle. So, um you'll be hearing from me a lot. Obviously, more public information sessions and um I also want to create an ordinance committee to help guide this um so that it's not just me coming to you. I really want more um more expansion of the public engagement. And that's what I have for tonight.

Just something to think about. We saw a presentation about a new logo for worth being a friend of the city. What would it take to change code enforcement name to code compliance? We can certainly discuss it and see. I haven't seen that in any other city. So, it just sounds like it's just has that negative market is really what you're at. CPO as opposed to compliance. Interesting. Yeah. Don't go skipping down the bunny trail because next year I'm going to do something about law enforcement. I like I actually like

really isn't that the goal is Yeah, it is complant. CCO I like that better than CEO said the only just I've always maybe there's many I think the negative would be like just it's not a term in common usage. So it's like I put on our um applications because I'm going to write like hey the deputy city manager is also the chief operating officer because that type of role but I wouldn't call the chief operating officer eligible role is that in the city that's not the current term and common usage that seems like a small thing to your point signal that hey it's a code of compliance we don't really it just sends a better message

send and maybe there's for knives that can kill that idea. You know, maybe there's repercussions every cause has a reaction. So, but still worth looking into. Yeah, I think you're just user friendly. He knows the better. Putin Fman. I don't know if you met THOSE GUYS UP THERE. JUST KIDDING. THEY'RE WONDERFUL. SO, I'm happy to see that you're putting a, you know, that you're already planning on a lot of public engagement for round two and even in round one.

Um, but I do think that the public will want to participate for sure in this round too with the updates and everything. Yes. So, yes, it's wonderful. Yeah. And we recently caught that Bar Harbor is doing some engagement around their ordinances as well. And the way they've set it up is more like subject matter. So, it's like, are you interested in natural resources? Do you want to have influence on this? So, addressing it in in kind of things that are in alignment with one another. Um, so we're we're kind of keeping an eye on what they're doing.

And, you know, I think to me there's an importance. We want to have an engagement in the process, but we also want to move quickly on the pieces that are of um could be of most importance and sending signals to the development community that we are business friendly and that we are housing friendly.

I think we talked about the other piece and some of those are going to be tough political and are very much a policy decision of the city council. Um and the staff needs to provide draft zone board of appeals and limiting the scope um so that they don't have appeal authority over larger housing initiatives that approve our plan board um is something I think is worth consideration so that we don't have happen with um recently happened when there's only board of appeals and delayed processes mistaken pieces especially when your planning board is so subject not an expert on this but there's issues with local control on that um in the sort of traditional world of zone board of repeal. I think you heard from consult last time around that that had a time and a place for some of these bigger projects, but nowadays every citizen because it's so easy just to put that it's going to superior court anyways no matter what way there's any more appeal rules. Um it's either going to be as the city's going to sue um or the citizen or group uh who didn't receive the wanted. So it just delays project and housing. There's a bunch of other pieces like this that you know if you really want to streamline housing be like we are housing friendly and housing developer friendly um that are going to take tradeoffs on um but how can we maybe package up some of those at the front end um so that they don't get lost year and a half because the housing issue is so important. We just got an application in for a grant. Maybe we'll get it, maybe we won't. But uh to me in my opinion from the policy area that's the area where I think the most citizen what do you do about housing? and the short-term rentals we're going to start discussing soon that kind of those issues if we become the front of is there a change that we can make that could promote more housing developers holding housing here of you know do we have an exemption for permit uh fees if you build housing we build housing over it might not be a huge amount of money but it sends another signal to the developer community housing that like

come through our door if you're going to build housing we don't have to pay for you know We we want that activity so bad that we want to give you a white horse service to get you through our our process changes we can change with our the sheretses as they call it just hey if you're going to build a housing building of this size we will we will two three meetings a month with our planning board um to get that project over the line so that you could get to yes and if we can shorten the time cycles of these developers and they can save money on That's one of just an example of a very minor thing that we did in the ordinance is um typically applications that'll go before planning board are due 21 days before the meeting and we've bumped it to 28 days before the meeting to give us more time to talk with the developer and make sure that everything is ready for planning board. planning board does have the ability to actually uh kind of fasttrack things to a final stage if everything is in the application and good to go with them. And that would that's an opportunity to make the process go faster by giving us more time for the internal review and the talking with the developer and more time for them to give revisions to us. They're better set up for when they go before planning board. So, it's just like minor things like that. um we're hoping will make a big difference in the future. And I've talked to some other towns who have done similar things and they said that it did make a difference. So just very minor process tweaks like that.

There's also some stranger things we could consider uh which I think should also be considered. What if it's just turning the city council into having some, you know, kind of fine court authority type structures where, you know, a lot of times we come into an issue where a citizen has a means that hey, this is outrageous. So and so's, you know, we saw this a few times, the letter chickens or there's a rooster and the ordinance or this and like our option is letters and then building a case of letters that we get responded respond to enormous amount of time for our offices and then we the final letters are letters to judicial system those organics. Um and then we're in a judicial process. It can take a very long time. And for these citizens on the other end, it's like this they're just in like another world of lack of compliance. Um there could be a consideration where they call it like a a nonappeal authority judicial planning board has that role right now. So the council could essentially be if you know if you don't respond to our letters it's kind of like a be required to appear before the city council this this date if you don't then we can start limiting our own times that we've been there and that's um be very new and a very different process that's something that like you know

phase three Charlie phase three phase three that is we have to ask the kings down the roll we can do what we No, I'm just kidding. Um, and then I had a thought and it just left the station, so I'm not going to waste your time and trying to remember what it was. So anyway, well, I'd say I do remember it. So, one of the really big benefits that I'm seeing from a project like this is that we are spending less time trying to understand our own ordinances because we have clarity and we'll be able to actually focus on the things that are coming and really get ready for that. So, one of the things Tabitha emailed me today about um the the data centers. The data centers and I know at the state level they

that too. Yeah. There's a moratorum through 27 but having things cleaned up gives us the ability to focus on do we need to get ahead of this. Um that's if it passes the mortorium is give give the towns a chance to um have a say in what's coming and what it's like. Yep. So that's like an example of one of one of the great benefits to this project. So anyh who, I'm done. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Sing Daniel's praises. She also secured a $15,000 grant to help with our ordinance in the States. We don't have to ask for the reimbursement. They already It's not in our coffers yet, but it Yeah, we sent them an invoice. So

yeah, thank you. And I really like the e-code piece. It's not this budget segment, but probably next one I put that in the kind of summary of digital stuff. It's just so much more efficient and helpful that you know it's a cost there. Um on the procurement policy truly um so I have the memo that I Yeah, I kind of breezed through this in the city council meeting on procurement was likely going to be a long night and this wasn't tomorrow. Um but uh Danielle actually in addition to being on that project, she's on a project with me on our ordinance reform. Okay.

Yeah. Um um but myself, Leia from our finance department, you know, we are it's it's one of the things I think is most surprising after I saw the state shape the budget was in was, you know, our our procurement policy and procedure, but also like the system we do with procurement. It's like it's it's um the city has received a lot of growth and um the processes for kind of managing all that we do is really important but without a system for it it's essentially a bunch of shared emails um over the last two years that I've been here and 10 before that and um you know we rewrite the same procurement over and over and over even if it's the year of because the person you know half 50% of staff turned a human based system of procurement. Um you have human based problems when those systems go away. Um, you know, I was thinking about this and um, you know, if somebody were to ask right now like what are the last two years of procurements that have been done here like the public records request then I have to tell them it's going to cost you a lot of money because it's an enormous research project for me to figure all those things out and it shouldn't be and that's a tragedy that it is. But I I think that's why even halfway through the budget year was like we have to figure out a system for this. there's no way um it's going to continue to plague us and make it look um you know as if something nefarious is going up um and that is to me the worst thing about trust in government and we need a process like unbreakable auditable um trackable and just more efficient so

we've been working really hard we're on two meetings a week with open gov um on this process uh and we've done two staff trainings already we actually a new system that's live on the website already where vendors can sign up. Um we've put forward our first uh uh request for proposals into uh the system for line striping and that'll be um we're kind of allowing in the near term for people to do online and uh you know the old fashioned mail in the quote if you'd like to and then we'll we're going to figure out a process. Tomorrow is the first um opening of one of those quotes. So we'll go into the system you know, there was one that arrived, the majority arrived via the online process and one that arrived via mail. Um, so, you know, for the near term, we'll have a process where we'll open it up when it's here, record it, and then we'll also, you know, have somebody go to the system and then switch to the open bid, and then it'll populate them all at the same time. We'll get those um price points out. Um, but it was another thing where, you know, today I was like, hey, have we notified Steve and the council of this thing? Oh, no. Like, it's just like it's not not I'm not trying to keep this from the counselors. It's just everybody's so freaking busy around here. Um that that gets dropped and then Steve will get upset about it. He'll email me about it. I'm trying to hide things from people. Um and then, you know, the city looks um bad. It hurts me every single time. And it's never the intent of this. It's always um in a system like this will mitigate that going forward. But we have to set up the logic in the system so that it's you know it is of the council's wishes and they can have trust and faith that it's you know this is the process it's going towards. Um and you know right now we have a master services contracting agreement. We didn't have that before in any of our of our bids. So now lawyers there'll be a master contract agreement because it's not just

procurement it's also in how we do each of our contracts. Um the line striping bid was kind of a a version of last time around and we had some people that pointed out some had made some mistakes but that all now gets tracked. We put people into the system. We have to log in ask questions. Um it's in the system. It's tracked. Um everybody can see the questions they get asked. You can have a lot ton of transparency. We've been in that position the past year. Hey, I talked to so and so on the phone and like and I talked to and it just it creates this illusion of like who's it we had it happen this time and somebody said hey I saw this thing should we change I said please put it like that's a good question please put it in the system so that everybody can see it um and moving forward they're just going to really much more of an online um trackable system for this

how would this process change what we just heard that we didn't and another for the fire.

So that's actually point number one uh use of cooperative purchasing contracts is one of the key areas for council discussion that's on the second page. Um so you know mun allows municipalities to piggyback on existing compelling contracts and purchasing organizations. Um it's currently mentioned in our procurement policy that's an allowable um use not to have to do an RFP. Uh especially for things that are more likely to purchase X um type of piece of equipment. Um we saw that with the vent track which came in a little under what we've done previous um RFP4. These are larger cooperative person. Source wall is one of the big companies. Verisoft's another big company. Can't remember the name of it off hand but there's like another version of this that's like an Amazon for government services. It's like, hey, I want to buy these types of things. Like, we're not buying a specific type of thing as opposed to like a, you know, it makes sense. You're getting the benefit of buying something at scale residents are buying. would do state crim process. They would put out bids, solicit bids from vendors. Okay, let's say cleaning supplies. And we had certain contractors in certain areas wherever your agency was. This is where you could buy it from their approved vendor list basically. and and they're supposed to give us they're supposed to give you the lowest price. So you don't run to Walmart getting something. They're going to be pretty much locked into having to go get stuff like

Yeah. And that's a um you know I works in state government you know it's kind of the efficiency of scaling. We had a whole office of diversity. They had to go through that process. They had to get checked, you know, 10 ways from Sunday. They had to certify that they were going to sell if you're this type of government at this size. If you're this type of this size, like this is what your price point is going to be. Um, so you can kind of get the efficiencies of I mean, you know, talking about folks like, so who's your intake officer? You know there are cities and towns and elsewhere get get there or we couldn't. It would be lovely if we just had one person that was in finance like all they did was all the procurements. We didn't have any of our department heads touch a procurement as oo except for saying like you know Scott would have come to somebody in finance and said hey I want to buy a truck like it's super important that someone council list they've asked for it that person would now be like okay um cooperative purchasing maybe that's not available through cooperative purchasing let's uh you know let's think about RFP internally now work with other folks and then they can kind of ask questions unfortunately I don't think for some time the budget shorts into that level.

Well, and and to be clear, that doesn't take away the fire truck committee. No, that the committee develops the criteria and then works. But we wouldn't have had them directly talking to be like, hey, do a competitive purchase, look at source well if you want to go if if not if you're not going to be able to do it through competitive purchase, you're going to have to RFP it. I'm not going to it's not a source well. Um then the only thing about putting the fire truck out for bid is you leave out the proprietary name. So anything that you want with that you I mean you can specify the engine has to be so many horsepower right

it has to be compliant with this and this and this pretty much you're going to get compens if you wanted to pierce you put that down.

Yeah. And I think the danger here there I think two and there probably be more but um pros I've sort of talked about here you're piggy back on the system using the best price based things the state actually has a huge list that they allow many municipalities to piggy back on to um I think that's very helpful and also just process wise staff you see the mistakes that happen there are honest mistakes but so kind of derisk that side of it. Um the flip side, I think it could be micated so much as you know u the the Volvo, right? Um for the excavator, you know, okay, so and so just loves the Volvo, they want the Volvo, it's the fancy one, it's the this like I'm going to source one procurement, but like okay, well what if there was a driver? Um and who cares if you like that Volvo one? I want to see the full um you know amount of them. So, you really should just be doing specs and not trying to buy that specific thing because you might come with it with certain subjectivities that would make you buy a more expensive even though it's the cheapest of those most expensive on a larger contract. I kind of feel like you get something like this from the fire department, you know, you feel like that's mitigated somewhat, right? Hey, we've looked at all the options on source on this piece. These are the areas. So, and I feel like we can bake that into there. If you use cooperative purchasing, you must do these steps in order to show that you like, you know, x, y, and z. And, you know, further along down here, there's a whole, you know, a whole process of like here's how the big going, here's how the evaluation will work, here's the logic of the system. Um, and Leia, you know, even though we're not going to have an intake, you later um is going to take a little more from finance as well in the procurement. you know, she's going to review these things and be like, "Hey, your journey is for cooperative purchasing." But I'm seeing in your piece here that like you have no other information on any other um item that you looked at like that's that's not that doesn't follow our policy for

cooperative purch. Um the other pieces I think is would be local um bidding on these projects. So you know um if if it is going to go to um you know these mostly cooperative purchasing is not through a local vendor here. Um now again that's not currently in our procurement policy is to um uh to have that be the case uh to use local vendors but you know they're not going to get whatever you know their um their fees on that for being a local provider um of that service. So, let's say this firetruck, if there had been a firet truck operator here in Ellsworth and you know was $50,000 more for the one out of Bangor, you know, but this firetruck um distributor dealership in Ellsworth is here. You know, if you're using cooperative purchase, you're kind of just you're not going to get what I think. That's another negative part of cooperative purchasing piece.

We can encourage our local vendors to get on to this. Correct. Yeah, you you can. And I think that's the um we have somebody that's do that we think will do that in the city or um just reach out to all of our it's been posted um on our socials um I don't think we don't have a vendor list really to do that and it's kind of similar I think we just don't want to seem like we're inviting particular ones so that's why we're kind of having this year to do this hybrid so that we can encourage and have one-on-one conversations and offer trainings at every opportunity. For every RFP, offer a training of how to log on and get on.

Cool. Yeah, I think that's kind of for the cooperative purchasing especially like if we had our own internal office of supply diversity and we're doing that, that's when we kind of but for our vendor recruitment here, it's more from like outside the cooperative purchasing.

It's like we were going to build some stuff veteran cemetery, state cemetery. and I needed building materials. So my my supervisor, the super new superintendent, well, I'll just go down to uh Jefferson and get it from this place here. And I was like, well, we got to check to see if they're on the approved vendor list. And it's like, wow, this is me. They listed out Hammond Lumber um you know a whole bunch of them but place down in Jefferson wasn't the lift. We can't buy it from you. We could buy lumber from Viking, EBS at the time, Hammond Lumber, where Butler couldn't buy, we could not buy it from KBEC Lumber Supply. We couldn't buy it from McCormack. We couldn't buy it, you know. I wonder on that note for local vendors if there's you know way to like I don't know if you've already done it like compile the list of every local business vendor that we've worked with um and then have like reach out and say hey you know not just them I feel like any business or like say hey Ellsworth businesses we're having aformational sessions SL training um for any business that thinks they might want to, you know, provide services or, you know, goods to the city um and just make that, you know, get it out, maybe even work get it in the paper, be on just get as much coverage as it can. So,

work with the chamber. We could definitely sell with all the um local vendors that we've paid. um that wouldn't be a hard I don't think it would be hard as long as there's you know up to date um contact information. I just think it would be you know pretty timeconuming to compile it all but I think we could probably do that I mean over the next couple months. Yeah I think there's kind of a natural I mean there we already put it out on social media and let people know that hey here's the new vendor signup portal. Um

I think over time this is kind of the beauty of having a system for this is you know going forward if you be you are a vendor with us now. You're in the system. You're required to be and you're going to have to have your insurance on file. We have a contract for you. Um and all those things are there and then you subscribe to the system and any procurement we ever do now just click a box and it'll always be distributed out to it. So over time, but you're right at the front end a little bit of a we've already started a bit um but how do we take some of our appearing? Um, so we have like here's our full vendor list of all of our categories and also over time like we just start acquiring our whole procurements list like the line painting is a great example. We made some edits. There were some questions on it. It's in there. Next year when we put it out, boom, we bring up last year's line painting. The

questions up everything when it comes to the finance committee because you look at you look down through the warrants and and you get we get both copies whether it's by department or it's just where the purchases land. It's pretty easy to figure out which one is buying what. But

yeah, and I think the um on that too before we switch to the next couple sections here, so I want to go through more. Um some of them I think will be pretty easy. Um but you pointed out the kind of uh you know warrant and I think there's also another area too where it's like hey we need to procure that. Um like that might not be $15,000 clip but you bought that chemical you know x amount of times. that's $197,000 over the full year. Like, have you put that out to procurement? Um, maybe there's only one vendor for it. Maybe it's just the group that's been there the whole time, but you can then you can set a a threeyear how long we want that and you be able to budget for. Yeah. So that it's not like, oh,

and besides staff time, this is our most expensive thing. We pass through entity for going. So, we want to get the best price on every single thing. Um, but if we don't have a system that can really kind of monitor and then trigger, hey, you got a contract coming up, you better um, better look at this type of thing about the bus um,

garages and leasing situation. Oh, lease is coming up. Like we if we had a system that managed our contracts because that's it's contracting, you know, we would have had, hey, a lease is coming up both in this area and this area. You should look at it now. We have more time for the public input process. you got more time. Um, so people don't feel as rushed and and across the board it'll just and then also doesn't rely on the people that were there. So, you know, as a person, oh yeah, this is coming up soon. It's just we just kick it out. Charlie, we got 7:45.

Um, so uh the local businesses and legal compliance I think is the other piece here. Um, you know, as I mentioned a few times, I want to be able to support local. I did find out this is legal. State, it's actually illegal. Couldn't violate the interstate commerce act. So, states can't

um prejudice main companies over non-maining companies. Cities can. Um, that doesn't necessarily mean you should. Um, so, you know, like what is the threshold that I say like we're going to buy from Millsorth Company? Is it $10,000 more than the other? Is it 5,000? Is it project specific? To me, it does invite like a little bit more sweet and we can get sued on if we were fair or not. To me, there's like a almost like a tiebreaker role that they can play here for local. It's like, hey, if everything else is equal, um, you know, I'm going with local group or it's kind of handled through really. I think we're going to be in the RFP versus the RFB process for a lot of these pieces and an evaluation committee. I think that's what um, and like the the vendor relationship, the premium, you have preferred vendors. Hey, we really like working with these folks. We really think it's not just the price that we want to go with these folks at, but um they're good operator, their services right next to us. We don't want to go to the places elsewhere. So, if you have a really objective hiring committee um of multiple people, you can kind of mitigate that. Hey, you just gave a good deal to a local person because they greed the wheels in the back end and that's why you gave the smoking or you paid more for that and others. So, I feel like that's where I'd like to keep the local compliance is it's like tiebreaker um or like the local their preferred vendor for the city that have a long-standing relationship um you know and it's price competitive um which could be taken into consideration by the local scoring committee so that it's justifiable if we get sued for it. Um the procurement approval thresholds

which uh

three um you know Sue Lassard team manager who's helping us out and um she in our audit stuff right now um she's was recommending that we we should upgrade um purchases over 15,000 to go to city council. This is also something that people who applied for the deputy city manager were just like, "Wow, the council was really involved in some small decisions here." And as I kind of noted in here that like I think after we've had the system for a while and if council can have a lot more trust in the community that like the procurement system is and the valuation committees are really mitigating a lot of that um then we could think about going above the 15,000 piece. Um, if it's approved in the budget cycle, if it's gone through procurement, sure, maybe go to 25 or 50,000. But at this time, until something's baked, I think just keep it at it's over $15,000. Even if we talked about in the budget cycle, got to come to city council. It takes a little longer, but um, you know, that's no changes at at this point. Um, council modification and video things and awards um is a big one, you know. Um uh as you probably seen I don't uh talk to counselors about bids or RFPs. None of you um you know um it's it's to keep the activity. You guys are there to vote on these items. Staff review it and you know uh once we get these together that's it's your decision to kind of persist and if you feel like you have the information it's a good idea if you don't think it's a good idea. Um but you know there are if it's a if it was just a bid and we do mostly RFPs not RFBS here because there's evaluation committee. It's not just um necessarily the price um but the quality of what we're getting um liability of the firm. There's a bunch of other things that

these communities evaluate. Um, and then how this goes to council um for bid openings and awards um oftentimes like the packets 300 pages long. We saw that with the school um it was track piece and just it wasn't intentional why they didn't add it to the packet but it's how we're going to so much materials. this process with having it all be digital online will enable it just just press the button and distribute the council packets. Um to me I'd like to have pretty specific guidance and maybe like some council sign off though that on like what that means but not sharing if it's a request for proposal. This is not this is subject to negotiation. and um and that that I would like it so that when those things finalize that it gets distributed all out to council um you know at the same time so you all the same information at the exact same time but then also there's specific rules on um you know how that information can be shared and can't be talked about publicly that would be agreed to as well. Um so it doesn't open this up to liability prejudice process. Um that's that's kind of my um my my hope with that system is just we'll design the logic in the system. So when the bid's finalized, you guys will get all the packets for everybody who submitted anything and required not be able to talk in detail about specific aspects and there's questions ask me council. Um I've got that before which is I love I tried to write a public memo on something recently on this and other can't talk about it. still in negotiation. Um, you know, so that that's where it gets a little bit trickier on that, but I'd like to streamline that council has all the packation um as soon as it's open. At the same time, um, presolicitation market research as well, RFIs, this is another

kind of um, discussion point I've had with legal on just um, you know, there may be times like, hey, how much does this cost? Where are we at? um I want to just get a ball qualified figure if this is something that I should go through this ginormous process all to get to the end of the line where it's like nobody's really even willing to do that in the area we know local vendors and other pieces and just getting a little bit more designed on a process which just doesn't exist at all in our current procurement like how that should be guided so that staff know here's the rules of premarket solic solicitation market research talk to folks as much as you want but as soon as we go out to RFP it's done you know we talk anybody anymore. And if you if they ask you any questions about it, tell them to go online, put a question in the system so that everybody in the system can see what the question is until it closes because it's another trip up here that I can understand a long time ago. Just keep calling around and ask the questions, but we got to um the integrity of the system is paramount. um especially if it's open a lawsuit. So, we got to just make sure that um that's that's there and that people know what the pre-market research are. Talked about the intake a bit um council role in the process as well. We talked about that um on you know the importance of remaining objective during these these processes and working through myself as a city manager when we have questions as opposed to biders themselves um I think is important um or not if we don't want that to be the case and we want counselors to be able to talk to any bidder they would like during an RFP process and start doing their own discussions um that's the desire of the council on our procurement polic you know, please let me know that and I can make that into the policy. But, um, you know, staff take a lot of time and work to, uh, to make it as objective as possible and it can be difficult if there's cross communication, especially with regard to again, pre-market

solicitation, same kind of thing. Hey, I think this is a good idea, but um, and we need to be maybe better on like this is out for, this is out for this, this is what the process is going to be. Um but really important um especially with your your voting on these things that you're getting all the information at the same time and can have an objective. Yes. Um there's a bunch more in here I'll let you read later on just kind of the the process workflows we're working on with an enormous project planner with so many on you could imagine. Thank you and Danielle. Uh Sarah's on the open gut asset management system with the water department things and um parks and recent forward um soon. Thank you. I I just gave you questions. Uh one of the other nice things here

I saw that thank you very much. Sure. Um Pat asked about it today like what's the process of that um of the realtors looking out for you know selling surplus city properties. Um Sue put that in the system. She's our second um person to put it in there. Um, it was my fault, Pat. I hadn't

given edits to it yet. So, actually, no, no, thank you. And I I went in the system, gave my comments on adding a few areas. Soon I had talk last week. I'm like, how are we going to score this one? Like, what if five locals come in and are good realtors? Like, do we monitor it? Um, do we but I think super's got some good information together on like you know we can we can have an evaluation committee maybe maybe how they market it can be scored what their fee structure is can be scored and then maybe if it does come down to like there's three like you know the properties we can just do a simple lottery for three if we got you know we get three local relative uh maybe we could formulate that and One possibility is uh give them all a piece of five because like I said I you're probably still working on the list of properties because I know that there's a bunch of them.

Yeah, I've got all the and you're doing a great job at it. I know it's very tedious. I yeah, I've got I believe all the foreclosed properties that we know of, but now what I'm doing is going through all of our other properties to see how we came about getting them. Um they're ones that we've had for a while and unfortunately with this new law, it doesn't matter when we got it. If it was foreclosed on, then we need to find the prior owner and do that whole deal. But that Yeah. But the the thing is is we started getting it back on.

Yep. And as long as the overage goes back to Yep. So that we're right with the state and right with every doing the right thing. Do you know what I mean? get get property back on the tax so that we're not spending all maybe the money's we love it should be our second RFP in the system so um and that's part of this too is like not just we want to get more bids on these things we have so many just like single bids or not a lot of information so how can we use you know some of these larger cooperative purchasing contracts and get some good prices if we're not getting bits how can we make it easier for people to get um take a quick if you don't Mind, Patrick, I'll kind of fast track a few of these.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we got four minutes.

Four minutes. Tomorrow field is is easy. It's just a notice that um Rotary is doing their stage uh two of their field upgrades. We have a nice big presentation of that a while back in council before the student council slides and pieces. Counselor had a question on if it's going to be similar stuff you were thinking in Bolton. So, we're working on that. They're doing some parking lot changes, the fields getting repaired, um some fencing pieces. They raised looking at $80,000 for the project. So, I think we're coming to like 214. It's just everybody just comes in and one of the only groups that's not looking for anything. They're just here updating awesome stuff they do. The city's technically the owner of that place. Um and we do do a lot of maintenance there, but the Rotary is birthed this concept. I think like the 1950s or something to have that put together and we're fortunate to have a really active Rotary that's not just going a long time ago but it's keeping up with it and doing incredible things.

Charlie, is it one Rotary Club and you have your choice of which means you attempt or are they two Rotary? Two separate. There's the noon time and the evening Rotary. So which Rotary club is doing? This is the evening group I see. And the new Taiwan is doing they just actually put out some requests for proposals for grants and for some upgrades which we put an application for for some park things. So yeah, so it's two great road a little a little uh competitive between RO. It's wonderful both sides of and what Moose Lo Moose Lodge is helping out too, right? They want to do some stuff. So that's great. You know what I mean?

Volunteers are awesome. Give them a little bit of food. Give them a certificate. Yeah. And some city blanket. We got That's what they used to do to the Marine Corps League when they come over to the veteran cemetery in the mall.

In terms of next just a little preview of the agenda for two weeks from now. Um we have Sarah in the seats. I'm going to join on uh on teams. I'm going to um vacation school education week. Um some great pres. It's volunteer appreciation month and so we get some some great volunteer awards for some local citizens and businesses. Um and uh the uh park's coming back. It was kind of our unfinished business. Rod's talked to legal and some other folks just about that project and there are some questions on what this would obligate us to. So I have some answers there move forward on that. Um there is you know uh it's just renewal licenses is usually pretty straightforward. There is a new business one in Ellsworth MV um doing business as Nville. Um

this is this appears to be the um the marijuana bills grand and sort of request for a new license. out of the city council denied that request um when they're operating as marijuana same location genetics which was the previous lency

um the owner of that property license runs out at the end of June. So, um I will leave it to council. I'll try to get an attorney position um on you know if this changes anything for you all um and leave it to the council on if um I think this name change or any other aspects of this request for license changes from these decisions. Um then on the other side of that we have the cannabis overlay zone and we talked pretty extensively on that. I don't um anticipate um a lot there. Uh the uh sale of vacant owned lot land. That's a city owned piece. it's not part of the onscion on that. Uh we have a couple items that are relative to the audit finding that um that we were over budget in previous areas in previous years and um there wasn't reallocations within the budget cycle. U so you know we I've noticed that there was during this budget season there was a few overages. Some of them are totally unpredictable on I think it's solar credits. A lot of people are over on their power. Um, a lot of people over on legal line items. Um, that's including the city council's legal line line item. I think in some ways that's this year we went from having a master legal fee across the board that was variable to trying to portion that in each of the departments and some people have like zero or 200 bucks less than legal and some are over. So this isn't some way to right sizing that. But a few of the areas there were some unbudgeted things that came in that are likely to be over. uh want to pull from certain reserve accounts and then um look to pay back those reserve accounts um so that it's uh you know it's pencil over in the budget cycle that the overage happened and we'll have that other funding uh to

um to contend with some this cycle. Um the uh with the longline shaping contact again we'll open that um proposal tomorrow on the evaluation committee will go to work on that. It's going to be a little clunky in the near term as I'm working on the logic for how those distributions go out to council. So if I can figure it out so we can just have it all be sent email at the same time through the system. Awesome. We got one that's paperbased and we input that. Um but just bear with me for a little while. I um try to figure out a more uniform process for distributing um the evaluation communities for price. And that's all like all the scoring happens in here. Um you know all the all the questions um keeps a track of all the questions that I just asked Sue should be here. So um we'll have discussion.

Just a little note on that. The last two contracts that city of Ellsworth has given lion strike was never disclosed to the council that they were city employees that were awarded the contracts. I think that the in fairness when it's presented if it's awarded to a city employee it needs to be disclosed two times in a row that has happened and two times in a row it was never disclosed. And I'm not against a city employee satelliting a business or moonlighting a business or bidding on city business, but boy, it has an awful lot when it's not disclosed.

I could not agree any more than nasty. We don't have any rules against that. No. And um yeah, I think there's, you know, sometimes there's just an honest mistake on um you know, hey, I couldn't get this out in time. I'm not trying to, you know, get this meeting at the time. I mean like that's you know I want to get process better that piece I don't like you know that really needs to be disclosed this those were before my time um as city manager for those moving forward noticed I was like wow man I looked into it you're allowed to have city employees I actually think we should potentially bar city employees just moving forward makes it easier and cleaner too on just like having a prohibition I don't know if you council agrees with that but that's how was when I was in New York City and Boston

you can't bid on projects We had we've had that a couple times come up where somebody's like, "Hey, like I can do that through my contracting floor and I'm like, "No, might we might be able to get the best price." Um, you know, I I feel like that's to the to the public out there could be like, you know what I mean? I'm getting some concurrence here. I might just bring forward, you know, some things take a lot of time to figure out, but edit to our ordinances. So, city employees are allowed to um on these on our own city projects just a general cohort.

There's going to be an interesting intersection of we want to encourage local businesses but you can't be a city employee but what about a family member of an employee who owns a local business. So it might get well that's easier because then as long as that person's not involved in decision making process okay you can kind of

I just I'm not jumping up and down limiting employee entrepreneurship but I I don't like how the last two times uh and it's been over four years because they've renewed the contract without going it out. Um so it's been this has happened for four years and with two contractors and they both were city employees. Uh, and that's just not a good picture. U, I'm not saying we shouldn't um I'm not saying we should bar employees from satelliting and all that. I'd just like it to be mentioned. I'd like it to be on top of the table, not learn it secondhand somehow or some way. Maybe the easiest way is what you're saying. I don't know. But I I don't Same thing happened down at the the Harbor Park. You had an employee um doing the Harbor Park vending and then we were supposed to get paid and we didn't get paid and that become a mess.

Yeah, that's why I like it just a general prohibition. If not, you there might be good reasons why you go with the employee, but it's like make it harder. just always keep that out of it because you'll never get whenever you do something with an employee, you'll never get the it's nasty. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty big there's a potential confidence just bigger part is the public perception and I think yeah I don't know it's the first time I'm hearing of this and I think it's my opinion is it's the very least it's worth more of a discussion but my instincts are makes more sense to just the risk of a variety.

It's messy. Yeah,

sometimes it's messy and it's just hey, it's process we can't do it and it's like that's something we can fix internally. Sometimes it's like that's messy and we should just have policy having that kind of practice. Um police chief thing is pretty simple. Let's just um accept money that we are owed. Um it's 10,000 worth. Um and then a pre- agreement 11 intents for acceptance of the future courthouse road. This is part of our um developer agreement um to city intends to um establish this public way. Um Sarah will talk about more about that. This one should be pretty straightforward. We don't this chance we get sued and we'll have to do it anyways. So, uh, but we can keep stay in compliance. Uh, Sarah will have more on that. And then the personnel matters is just my performance review. It's a long meeting. Last time this happened, we I think it was July before we actually got to the performance review, but um I can be around for that. We're trying to also establish this better system this time around digitally. Same process that the rest of the staff goes through. Car's working.

Yeah, I work with Carrie. Just making sure Charlie gets a good review from council and then the process set up car. I'm going to get the HR try to get the HR committee Abby and Nancy just to talk about it here in a week or two and then um so there's a clear process and then Charlie there was an issue last year where I couldn't input information. Yeah, we're trying. Yeah. Carrie, I thought I had but I hadn't. We're gonna

Yes. Yeah. Nothing nefarious. Nobody's but my review doesn't exist from last year in the system. Now, those things are, you know, shielded from um request anyways. But they're also really important and you can look for last year. It doesn't exist.

No. I mean, I could probably try to talk to Michelle, see if she can give me the documents that she emailed around or like system, but again, takes time and plenty of things as opposed to we have a new system for the city staff to be reviewed in. Um, and I think it's also important that the same types of things that I'm being scored on, staff's being scored on is the same center I'm being held to. They only have to usually have one boss do their review. I have to have seven. Um, you're lucky enough.

Yeah, I think I would like the HR committee to we haven't done this staff yet, but do my reports as well. Um, to get a feel for that. That's the best I can do for sympathy. All over. And this agenda will be finalized this tomorrow. Tomorrow. Yeah. One day. Probably tomorrow. It'll probably go out. I mean, Wednesday, August, you know, all the public hearing stuff that was required for. Thank you all. Got some great stuff tonight.